


A Good and Distant Thing

by MercuryGray



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Historical Dress, Quiet Moment, Regret, Reminiscing, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: Cut scene from A Mansion House Murder.  With a quiet moment to herself before the guests arrive, Emma is remembering the hotel, and her life before.
Relationships: Emma Green/Frank Stringfellow, Emma Green/Henry Hopkins
Comments: 13
Kudos: 8





	A Good and Distant Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Mansion House Murder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384296) by [BroadwayBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/pseuds/BroadwayBaggins), [Fericita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/pseuds/Fericita), [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray), [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch), [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow), [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells). 



It was lucky Jimmy had come down when he did.

Emma had never known her brother to have much in the way of timing, but it was only Jimmy's intervention with his clerk that had saved them from getting ordered out into the street, the clerk having taken one look at their countrified traveling cases and Frank’s threadbare coat and made up his mind about them, not believing Frank for one minute as he pressed about his 'appointment' with the hotel’s proprietor. Of course, the appearance of the man himself, and the enthusiastic greeting he gave his brother-in-law, had put paid to that, and the clerk had been given orders that if the Stringfellows wanted anything, anything at all, he was to drop what he was doing and get to it. 

"I'm mighty glad you're here," Jimmy was saying as they climbed the stairs back to his office. (Slow going - his foot still troubled him, and now the various pains of age were adding to it.) "Alice has all of us runnin' around like fools, planning her 'do' for that Surgeon General fella so she can parade her husband in front of him. I don't know why she bothers with that man, when she could have married -"

"Because he's kind, and gentle, and he loves her terribly," Emma cut in, not wanting to hear another sermon on the men Alice could have married, and trying, at the same turn, not to make it sound as though these were things she thought her own marriage was deficient in. 

She didn't see much of her sister, with Alice in Washington City and Emma out in the backcountry, but in their limited trips to town Percival Squivers had shown himself, if not the most handsome or well spoken spouse, then certainly devoted. He had done some growing up since his cadet days at Mansion House, served with some distinction in the medical college after he’d switched to pharmacy, though the unfortunate underbite and shortsightedness had remained. (It was he who had proposed to Alice, at the war's end, and his had not been the only suit, though, perhaps, the most surprising of the lot.) "She's concerned for his advancement." 

Emma had never really been sure how much of Squivers' 'advancement' had been the work of the man himself or the accomplishment of Alice's batted eyes and honeyed tongue, but, as with many matters relating to her family, she kept her own counsel about it. Her sister was married and able to keep her own house in the style to which she'd been raised, and that was, perhaps, all that mattered. Alice had seen a chance and had taken it (her beau proving, on further review, to have several highly placed uncles in the judiciary) and now, in classic Alice fashion, was making the most of it.

Jimmy sniffed, not thinking very much of any of it, and resumed his conversation with Frank about the hunting out in Franklin County, and the extensive itinerary of entertainments (apart from Alice's party) he'd arranged for the weekend, leaving Emma to mind her own time.

After laying out her dresses and arranging for a maid to press them (and worrying about how she would tip the woman when she did) Emma contented herself with a tour of the hotel. Here were the stairs to the little rooms under the eaves where the staff had lived, the dispensary, the surgery, the little closet where she and Mary had prepared meals. All plush and polished mahogany now - she could feel her shoes sinking into the carpets.

The day room had resumed its work as a lady's parlor, smaller and more intimate than the one downstairs, and, unlike its counterpart in the lobby, blessedly quiet, the silence almost as opulent as the velvet on the settee. Emma sat down and observed the room, mentally rearranging the furniture. The light had been so nice in here, in the afternoons! She allowed herself to open the shutters, mindful that someone would probably be by soon to close them so the carpet wouldn't fade. It was nice to be among pretty things again. Their house in Franklin had a sitting room, where she often held bible study or the sewing circle, and though the ladies often remarked on the beautiful rug and her one lovely mahogany chair and the Dresden figures her mother had given her as a wedding present, she had no things as fine as these. (The chair was looking threadbare, and there was a chip in the back she usually hid with a throw.)

Someone had abandoned a magazine on one of the tables, and she moved to pick it up - the latest Godey’s, with its busy white cover, only a little dogeared at the corners. Godey’s! Now, there were some memories. (It was not a publication she was likely to find at home, Mrs. Hale’s more robust opinions being highly out of fashion in rural Virginia.) Her mother had kept a subscription, when they were girls, for the fancywork patterns and the stories, which she was wont to read aloud of an evening, but the true crowning glory of each edition was the fashion plate. How she and Alice had fought over them! Oh, the sheet music was very well, and the pattern could be used several times, but the fashion plate! She could see the folder into which she’d tucked hers, a prize possession no one could have separated her from - until changing tastes prevailed and she began to leave the plates for Alice. Where had that folder gone? The rubbish bin, probably.

She opened the issue with a delicate hand, her fingers feeling, on instinct, for the heavier paper of the lithograph and their attached descriptions, opening it up with careful fingers. 

She chuckled over the evening gown,  _ white muslin over pink silk, trimmed with a plaiting, and trimmed in Mechelin Lace _ , trying to imagine managing such a train, especially when there was a little girl about to step on it just so, and the absurd purple confection of a  _ visiting dress of two shades of purple, with its front breadth formed of puffs and plaitings. _

But she could not deny that her eye was drawn to the walking costume - _ dress in two shades of blue silk. The front breadth is formed of kilt plaits; the back breadths are plain. Apron overskirt and sash of the darkest shade of silk. Basque bodice, trimmed with the dark silk. A chip hat, trimmed with silk and flowers, complements the look.  _ Oh, that  _ was _ pretty.

A good silk would last for ages, if it was properly cared for and kept out of harm’s way -- but that pattern was easily fifteen yards, and probably nearer twenty, and silk was a dollar a yard while a charming calico that could be washed to shreds but ten cents - and that was before the lace and notions, and the hat and its trimmings, and a new pair of boots because the old would not do for such a grand gown. 

Emma sighed. She could see the clerk’s face at the mercantile in town if she’d even asked to see a bolt of navy silk, that mixture of disdain that it was far too expensive for the likes of her, judgement that she, the preacher’s wife, had no business whatsoever with a modish silk dress, and general annoyance at having to bring down an article she couldn’t and wouldn’t buy. Where on earth would she wear it - to church? Kilt plaits and a basque bodice indeed. Her husband's parishioners would say she was putting on airs - which a good many of them did already, when there was something doing and she had one of her headaches. And, while they were on the subject, who would be washing such a thing? She’d trouble enough with starching Frank’s collars before she’d added all those pleats and furbellows to the mix.

“There you are!” 

Emma looked up from the magazine to find her sister in the doorway, looking very much like a fashion plate herself. But then, Alice Squivers was not doing her own laundry these days, and Emma was quite sure she had a small army of women looking after her dresses in her big house in Washington City. “Jimmy said you’d arrived, but couldn’t tell me where he’d left you! Men,” she said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. “I expect most everyone else will be here soon, now that the afternoon trains are in. You should wait downstairs and greet them with me!”

“They’re not really my guests,” Emma said, feeling foolish. Her sister had been odd about the whole business of this party, raiding Emma’s letterbook for all manner of addresses - some for people she hadn’t seen in years. Why invite them, when it was hardly likely they would come? Hale hadn’t been particularly well liked when he’d been at the hospital, and who had the money for train tickets and hotel stays nowadays? She steeled herself for a thin guest list and began rehearsing all the tired questions she’d have to ask about jobs and houses and children.

“Nonsense! They’re  _ our _ guests,” Alice said, her voice aspiring to a level of coziness and camaraderie Emma had not felt with her sister for a long time. “And it’s you’ll they’ll want to see! They are your friends.”

_ They  _ _ were _ _ my friends, _ Emma thought quietly to herself, laying aside the magazine to do her sister’s bidding.  _ What they’ll think of me now I hate to speculate. _

They collected Frank from Jimmy’s office, ‘the boys’ already into a glass of whiskey and their collected reminiscences about the war, and the hotel, and the good old days. Alice ordered them downstairs and went to fetch her husband so they might go down together, a united show of force.

The downstairs parlor, with its delicately lettered  _ Reserved for Private Function,  _ was hardly crowded.

There were the Fosters, Jed as distinguished as ever but Mary much altered (she longed, suddenly, for her friends' good council, for the story behind all of this, the pale face and the walking stick and Jed’s watchful eye, regretting that she had been a fitful correspondent.) There was another gentleman there, talking with them, but she could not see - 

Good lord. Not him. Not now. Not like this.

And she tried, as she did whenever there was an unpleasantness to deal with, a joke to ignore or an insult to bear or her husband’s attentions to tolerate, to smile and fix her concentration on some good and distant thing - the velvet of the settee, the light from the window on the pattern of the carpet, the blue silk walking dress, sprigged with the sunlight of a backcountry lane. 

Someone was saying something, but she could not make it all out - the train from Boston, three children, life at the college, a dean now, how lovely. 

And here - he was turning, and that smile was upon her - abbreviated, perhaps, but still much the same as she remembered. It would not do - the vision would not hold! Frank was introducing them, Frank always did that, a victor showing off the spoils of his picture-perfect bride,  _ my wife, of the Alexandria Greens, the furniture factory, you’ll have heard of them. _

But she could not hear Frank; the only thing she could see was  _ him _ , glasses, well-turned suit and waistcoat, a still trim frame, gold watch-chain, and those eyes, meeting hers, bowing slightly. Such blue! And she realized belatedly, her smile slipping just a little, that the walking suit she had longed for upstairs was just the sort of dress a well-paid professor’s wife might wear.

“Mrs. Stringfellow,” he said, and it was all she could do to smile and acknowledge him, feeling very faint for hearing, in his voice, that he seemed to regret saying it as much as she.

**Author's Note:**

> Write something nice about a dress, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.
> 
> We talked far too much about everyone’s extreme reluctance to use Emma’s married name that the opportunity was too good to ignore here - of all the people calling her Mrs. Stringfellow, she wants to hear it from Henry the least.
> 
> The description of this dress, and the image, are almost directly from the June 1875 Godey’s Ladys Book, though the original is in brown, not blue. 
> 
> I tried to move Squivers into a medical specialty that wouldn’t require him to learn surgery. Though pharmacy in its more professional practice is still growing at this time, the oldest pharmacy school in the country, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, was established in 1821. I also tried to backfill why Daniel the clerk was so helpful to Emma in Chapter 7 of A Mansion House Murder.


End file.
